


Prelude

by digimo0n



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU exploration, Angst, Ben Deserved Better, F/M, Interrogation scene, The Beginning of the End, a love letter to my 2015 self, felt cute might delete, how did snoke turn ben, i will go down with this beautiful ship, non-graphic mentions of torture, revisited, rey thinks about ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22089730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/digimo0n/pseuds/digimo0n
Summary: Against the cold steel of the floor, Rey trembles. Her chest caves into her lungs and ribs. She can’t tell anyone about that all-consuming sensation that filled every abyss she’d ever bore: an experience she shared with the very person she loathes the most. And especially not, when it continues to caress her sharpest edges, and thrive within her.AU exploration of why Ben turned to the dark side.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: non-graphic mentions of torture.

*

Days after her return from Starkiller Base, Leia finds Rey in the basement, sitting on cold steel ground: legs crossed, back straight, eyes closed.

“I need to confess something.” Rey states. She opens her eyes and looks up to the gentle, open face of the General; a delicate woman, hiding a thunderstorm of rage and grief.

Leia looks expectant. “I know. You’ve been carrying something. Tell me.”

Rey stands. Luke’s lightsaber hangs in her belt. It jangles against her thigh. “It’s about Kylo Ren.”

“You know he’s my son.” Leia breaks the tension between them with five simple words.

Rey nods. It’s not what bothers her. She wishes it were. “He was inside my head, searching for the map. But then, I was inside his.”

Leia remains collected but her eyes are alarmed.

“I know what happened to him.” Rey sighs the sentence with the gravity of it’s meaning.

Leia exhales. She’s still, and pensive.

Rey waits in terse silence.

Then, the General speaks.

“He was on a solo expedition in the mountains, for his Jedi training. He disappeared, for eight months. We searched for him, endlessly, but he was nowhere to be found. Luke found his transmitter in the snow. He had been attacked on the first day of his arrival.”

“Kidnapped.” Rey confirms. “They tortured him.”

“Do you know who…” Leia can’t bring herself to finish the thought much less the sentence.

“That part wasn’t clear.” Rey finishes quickly. She doesn’t need to give her any false hope.

Leia turns away. “You can imagine the twisted sort of allegiance you would give someone if they relieve you of pain.”

“Snoke.” Rey spits, and the word tastes like acid.

“Snoke rescued Ben.” Leia replies. “When he returned home, he was so different, changed. When I realised how evil and twisted Snoke was, and how he’d warped Ben, it was already too late. Ben and his Knights of Ren slaughtered the rest of Luke's students.”

“It wasn’t just Snoke.” Rey tries to sound calm, but there is something undiluted in her tone. “He was visited by the ghost of his grandfather, sometimes as Anakin Skywalker, sometimes as Darth Vader.”

Leia spins round. This is not something she was privy to.

Rey continues, and her gaze falters. “That’s why he feels an obligation to Darth Vader. Vader’s strength was the only thing that kept him alive.”

Leia wipes away tears, and Rey struggles to see the General in pain, feels the guilt as if she caused her suffering.

“I’m sorry.” Rey’s voice breaks.

Leia’s words are gentle as she asks, “Do you know – how bad it was, for him?”

Rey’s mouth trembles. White anger is pulsating through her veins, anger that doesn’t even belong to her, but instead lies rooted within the memory of a black-haired man.

She doesn’t need to torment the General with the details, but she also won’t lie.

“Yes, it was horrific.” Rey says blankly. It’s no wonder his soul mutilated itself, and he became a dark and unnatural creature. Deep within her gut, empathy for the enemy swells, but it’s not enough to quell the symphony of rage she festers for him. She has to remind herself: he _killed_ Han, his own father.

“He can be saved.” Leia says in one, final breath. “I know there’s still good in him.”

Rey sways with conflict. She doesn’t agree, but the General has just lost the love of her life, and so the hope of her redeemed son has to stay alive a while longer.

“Tomorrow, I’ll leave for Luke.” Rey resumes her position on the ground.

Leia looks expectant, again. “There’s nothing else bothering you?”

Rey locks eyes with the General, and for a moment the forbidden truth dances in the air around them. Does she know that Rey is somehow intricately connected to her son?

Then, Rey blinks and the moment is over. “I’m resentful.” A truth, just not the one Leia was seeking. “I couldn’t save Han, and I wasn’t able to save Finn.”

“Finn may still recover yet.” Leia is always hopeful, and Rey imagines her aura is warm and bright.

Once Leia is out of sight, Rey slouches. Her breath is uneven. Her mind aches.

She lies sprawled on the ground beneath her.

It’s calling her.

The echo of a memory calls to her.

_She snaps to lucidity._

_The environment is alien and cold, and unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. The last thing she remembers – the forest._

_Her vision comes into focus. He's crouched in front of her; quiet and observing. Her skin crawls._

_“Where am I? ” her voice is wary._

_“You're my guest." A mocking display of cordial formality, she’s sure._

_“Where are the others?” her wrists move inside the restraints, testing the parameters._

_“You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?” Judgment and acidity drips from his disguised voice. “You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.”_

_She is relieved. He must have felt that._

_Behind his mask, he bores at her. She feels the crawl of his gaze, and tries to steel herself._

_She remembers the way he’d taken control of her body, and entered her mind without permission. A lingering ache of the probe remains._

_She’s seething with righteous fury._

_“You still want to kill me?” he's amused._

_Fury wins against reason, and she says, “That happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”_

_In one deliberate motion, he unmasks his face and rises from his crouch, revealing the unexpected: he’s undeniably human. A mere mortal._

_She’s speechless – confused, even. He’s young, and his eyes are sad and strange._

_He approaches her. “Tell me about the droid.”_

_His voice — his human voice — cuts her like ice._

_She stares ahead, at the wall. “He’s a BB-unit with a selenium drive and a thermal hyperscan vindicator—”_

_He’s quick to interrupt. “He’s carrying a section of a navigational chart, and we have the rest, recovered from the archives of the Empire, but we need the last piece, and somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you.”_

_“You: a scavenger.” He states, not unkindly._

_Hot tears swarm the lids of her eyes._

_His gaze flickers up and down her person for the briefest of moments. “You know I can take whatever I want.”_

_He seems to regret the words almost immediately as he has said them, but it’s a warning. And he needs her to be scared._

_She blinks. Her cheeks are wet now, and her rage is all consuming. How dare he—_

_Then, he’s inside her mind again. He brushes past her weak attempts at resistance. He pushes something towards her: assurance. If she gives him the map, she won’t be harmed._

_She struggles against his assault. He’s sifting through old memories, painful and private, and completely unnecessary._

_“You’re so lonely,” he breathes. “So afraid to leave. At night: desperate to sleep. You imagine an ocean. I see it. I see the island.”_

_And he’_ _s only telling her this because he needs her to know: he can take whatever he wants, and he wants the map._

_Her breath hitches. He allows her to feel his reactions. He identifies with her ache and abandonment._

_“And Han Solo, you feel like he’s the father you never had. He would have disappointed you.”_

_He allows her to know: Han Solo is his father. The revelation ignites bitterness._

_“Get — out — of — my — head.”_

_He places distance between them, but his presence remains. “I know you’ve seen the map. It’s in there, and now you’ll give it to me.”_

_She struggles against his persistence._

_And something that had crept inside without her noticing takes precedent. A sensation spreads throughout her being, like warm angelic water sliding into every crevice and pore, filling every ache and void she has. Perhaps, more worryingly, she realises that it feels and sounds and breathes like—_

_Him._

_What is happening —_

_“Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.”_

_He feels her the way she feels him. There is something instinctive about it that he understands, and he embraces the sensation far quicker than she does._

_All the while, his probe never relents._

_“I’m not giving you anything.” She gasps._

_He’s resolute. “We’ll see.”_

_The force of his power weighs against her like a thousand anchors. Until that moment, he’d been using restraint._

_Her lungs burn, and her airways struggle to remain open. He abandons his earlier cordial formality._

_The foreign sensation, the one filling her pores and spreading something akin to elation, is more pronounced. She focuses on that feeling, and it blooms into fruition._

_His mind shouts into an empty room: who are you?_

_Instantly, he’s expelled from her mind, but she’s still not alone._

_Waves of pain and abandonment roll inside her._

_Now she’s inside his mind. They lock eyes: he’s completely baffled._

_His memories scream out to her, begging to be witnessed. She peruses them at ease, if he’s trying to fight against her intrusion she can’t feel it._

_In one long moment, she lives them all: the terror of his kidnap, the pain of his torture, the anguish and conflict and suffering, all because he’s the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa._

_She cries with him; an adolescent boy, alone and scared._

_She watches his hope die, and sees it burst to life again with the ghost of his grandfather._

_She knows the debt he owes to Snoke, the persistence of his words, the idea that the ends justify the means._

_She knows how Snoke whispered words of vindication against his captors, how he promised their heads on pikes, how they would never be brought to justice under the Light._

_His tormentors, he knows them intimately. It’s —_

_She watches him and the Knights of Ren slaughter innocent younglings. Each death at his hands feels like a death she experiences._

_She is filled with nothing but disgust and hate, and she can’t tell whether it’s his emotions or hers._

_He panics. She’s close to the truth. His thoughts veer._

_He thinks she’s an anomaly; there is something significant and powerful about her. She fascinates him. She pushes past that._

_She finds the final nail in his coffin._

_“You – you’re afraid, that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader.”_

_He finally breaks their connection, and she finds relief. She reels, regaining breath._

_He vibrates with shock._

_She thinks, perhaps this is the first and only time he’d looked into someone and saw his own reflection staring back._

Against the cold steel of the floor, Rey trembles. Her chest caves into her lungs and ribs.

She can’t tell anyone about that all-consuming sensation that filled every abyss she’d ever bore: an experience she shared with the very person she loathes the most.

And especially not, when it continues to caress her sharpest edges, and thrive within her.

**Author's Note:**

> (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ
> 
> sooo i found this recently, written back in 2015 when tfa just came out, and i remember wanting to explore why ben had turned to the dark side, before it was revealed he'd been groomed since birth. i think it's really interesting to read work from 2015/16 because you can really see the progression of the characters and their relationship from then until now.
> 
> much love to everyone dealing with the aftermath of tros.  
> thank you for reading!!


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